Musician Elle King was recently diagnosed with autism.
King began to speculate that she may be autistic once she started preparing to be a contestant on Nation’s Dumbest, a new game show on Fox. She told US Weekly: “ … I actually found out right after the show that I’m autistic, and so I was like, ‘Everything makes so much sense now.’ But I didn’t even know,” King told the publication. Her pending appearance on the game show prompted her to take multiple IQ tests out of fear that she’d be the “nation’s dumbest.”
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What King, owner of both a CMA and an AMA, found is that she has above-average intelligence.
A Grammy nominee, King shared her diagnosis with her nearly four million Facebook followers in May. King sang recorded herself singing into a microphone and captioned the video with: “good news is, im autistic.”
Since being diagnosed, King has changed the company she keeps but hasn’t done much drastically differently. “… At the end of the day, I truly enjoy being an artist, being a performer, and getting to do all these other things just as myself is really fun for me,” King shared with US Weekly. “I keep telling myself whatever this next chapter is, I really want to be present and enjoy it.”
Now 37, King has had mainstream success with pop-country crossovers such as “Ex’s & Oh’s,” a top 10 song on the Billboard chart which received two Grammy nominations, and “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home),” that she sang with Miranda Lambert. Released in 2021, “Drunk,” was nominated for a Grammy for the Best Country Duo/Group Performance. The song reached number one on Billboard’s Country chart.
Fans were able to get their first glimpse of King and other Nation’s Dumbest contestants, such as Carmen Electra, Ice-T, Steve-O, and others, on Wednesday, July 15 when the game show premiered. New episodes are scheduled to run weekly throughout summer at 9 p.m. ET.
